


Water Illusion Show

by kopycat_101



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: AU, Execution, Gen, Hagakure dies but it brings no one happiness, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:43:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1794199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kopycat_101/pseuds/kopycat_101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seemed impossible, but somehow...Aoi Asahina, the overly energetic, sweet girl... Has murdered someone. Yasuhiro Hagakure's mangled corpse is proof enough.<br/>It's something that seems unbelievable, but everyone has come to the verdict: Aoi Asahina did it. And her ensuing execution is not pleasant. It's completely and utterly horrific.</p><p>(AU. Canon compliant up to the start of Chapter 5)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water Illusion Show

**Author's Note:**

> Based on concepts from one of the official DanganRonpa supplementary books, of the unused executions for the rest of the characters. Asahina's is being in a tank full of sharks, and Monokuma makes her go through a 'disappearing' act.
> 
> I had wrote the bare execution a year or more ago. So, I went back and dug it back up again, thinking I was only going to tweak it. Oh, how I was wrong.
> 
> I have nothing against either Hina or Hiro. Actually, I like their characters. But this is more despairing, no?  
> It's also nearing 5am and I've lost control of my life

* * *

 

She's not sure **why** she did it.

Yasuhiro Hagakure was annoying, sure. A large sack of potatoes when it came to being useful.

But that shouldn't have condoned his murder.

His murder by **her** hands.

* * *

She doesn't even properly remember how it happened, nor what led up to it. She has a vague inkling in her foggy, terrified mind that he just said something at the wrong time.

* * *

She was at the Dojo on the Fifth floor. The entire space-- the wooden paneling, the straw practice dummies, the atmosphere-- reminded her painfully of Sakura-chan. Of the best friend that was **dead**.

The first time she'd been there, she quickly left. But she was drawn to it. To the beautiful Sakura trees.

It had barely been two and a half, maybe three days since the new floor had opened. She'd gone to the Dojo to inspect it more thoroughly-- at least, that's what she told herself.

Tears began to slide down her face, unbidden. She didn't realize she was crying until a sob ripped through her throat. Despite trying to stop them, they had just kept coming.

Then the Dojo door opened, and there was Hiro.

He said some things...Hina thinks he had tried to comfort her, but it was all too muddled.

The only thing that clearly stood out-- the only thing she remembered he'd said-- was a remark that the Sakura trees were way pretty, and that it was otherworldly that Sakura-chan shared their name.

He hadn't even said it to her face. Just off-handed, in that stupid way he said things like his alien conspiracies, or of the feelings he got over things because he was a Fortune Teller.

Something in her snapped at that point.

* * *

The memories slowly swim back at her, clear as the surface of a sparkling lake.

She'd lept at him-- using her strong swimming legs to propel her forwards.

He had been crouching on his heals, looking at a lone, fallen Sakura petal in his hand.

From that vantage point, Hina was able to wrap her tiny hands around his throat easily. He was so tall that he towered over everyone that was left, so this was a particular stroke of luck.

He was now on her level-- no, beneath her. Before she'd lept at him like a ferocious beast, she had towered over him. Now he was definitely under her-- under her tiny, powerful body.

There was a struggle.

He was solidly on the ground, and was bewildered. He had a slow reaction time, and a slower time realizing the implications and what was happening to him.

Hina's nails dug into his throat. The time it took for him to come to terms with what was happening had allowed her quite a few seconds to put her strength into asphyxiating him.

She was doing a good job at choking him, but he was squirming under her.

Despite how athletic she was, he had more body mass. He was just taller, broader, and bulkier. And adrenaline would have kicked in-- he was capable of doing awful things with adrenaline and fear in his veins.

Like what he did to Sakura-chan, when all she'd wanted to do was **talk** to him, and reassure him that she would never do any harm unto him.

He smashed that bottle on her head-- a blow that would have killed anyone other than Sakura-chan.

That thought had passed through Hina's mind. It only made her more furious.

She grabbed the leg of a nearby training post, and with all her arm strength and adrenaline-fueled fury, hauled it up.

Then, it came down.

 **Hard**.

After the first strike, she managed to get both her hands around the leg. She brought it up in a swifter, cleaner motion.

Then she brought it down again.

Down again and again and again and Hagakure was screaming but then at times the screams were way too high pitched to be his and--

Hina realized that she'd been screaming as well. Crying, ferocious, anguished.

She'd brought the post down until Hiro's screams died. Until his face looked raw and un-discernible as a face. Until his chest caved in and his ribs broke.

Until he was mangled.

* * *

Afterwards, Hina took to using the breathing exercises her coaches always walked her through.

In. Out. In. Out.

But she was breathing much too fast. Too fast. She was hyperventilating.

She looked down, at the mangled body and mass of hair that used to be her friend.

She cried and screamed and shrieked. Her body couldn't move properly, and she tripped over her own feet, falling into a huddled mess.

She was sure that her friends would rush into the room, and notice what she'd done.

That she was a murderer.

But after another twenty minutes of a breakdown, Aoi Asahina finally calmed down enough to note that no one had come.

* * *

She hadn't wanted to learn it that way, but the Dojos doors were very thick.

They were also soundproof.

That fact only made the despair want to well and envelop her chest-- because Sakura-chan would have enjoyed to use this Dojo.

She would have liked the fact that it was soundproof, so she could go all-out and not alarm anyone.

Just like what Hina did.

* * *

Hina was panicked, but she knew what would happen soon.

The rest would notice that Hiro wasn't anywhere to be found, and that Hina was also not in her usual places.

She tried her best to doctor the scene, to hide as much of her crimes as possible.

Her hands and mind and body is shaky, but she tries, nonetheless.

She tries to think of a viable alibi, and of what to do with the evidence. What to do with the mangled corpse.

What to do with the **blood** on her.

She even thinks back to past trials, and what the culprits did then.

Burn things in the trash room, if she can. Try to dispose of the evidence in out-there places, to delay them being found. Wash the blood, and find something to do with the murder weapon.

* * *

She tries to hide as much of the crime as possible.

Not because she hates her friends-- rather, because she loves them too much.

She loves them too much for them to know that she mutilated one of their friends in a furious frenzy.

That happy, energetic Asahina was a cold-blooded **murderer**.

* * *

While the body announcement dings, her mind glazes over.

It's almost as if she's in a dream. As if, if she just closed her eyes, everything would be okay. That Yasuhiro Hagakure wasn't dead, and that his corpse wasn't mangled, and that the scene of the crime isn't gruesome and sloppy and reeks of her tears and regrets and anguish and despair.

While she walks around blankly, feeling empty inside-- yet full, because she's hiding and holding the knowledge that she **killed** and she killed **brutally** \-- she wonders about her victim. Would he still make terrible jokes, if he were alive? Would he still smile that goofy, annoying smile? Would he still insist that he was the leader, as the oldest of the group?

Then she wonders: why **him**? She was irked by him, thought him a moron, but he wasn't **too** bad.

The people that caused her more trouble were Byakuya Togami and Touko Fukawa. They slandered her, slandered Sakura-chan, hurt both of them, and were terrible since day one.

Despite everything-- every kind action or word-- they were both awful.

So why not **them**?

Why hadn't she killed one of **them** in a fit of despair?

It would seem more just than to have killed Hagakure. And it would have made more sense.

But nothing made sense anymore.

* * *

The trial commences.

She's quiet, forlorn.

She looks guilty.

And she knows it.

* * *

She'd tried her best to fix up the crime scene, but she should've known that she'd get caught quickly.

Makoto, Kyoko, Byakuya...They were smart. They always knew what was happening in the trials. Hell, they **led** the trials.

They present cold, clean facts.

She looks guiltier by the second.

However, something bothers the rest. Something beyond the core facts that are presented. Something that makes even Kyoko feel slightly dubious.

It's this: _How could the murder be so cruel_?

* * *

They throw questions back and forth.

_Why was the murder so brutal?_

_Would Hina really be able to lift the hefty training post to attack Hiro?_

_Does Hina have the hatred in her to mangle someone's body?_

_Is Hina capable of this crime?_

She puts up her best argument, but she's swathed with grief and self-loathing.

She feels like she's already in despair. She can't put up a good enough fight that way.

* * *

They have been through so many trials, that it's natural to them.

However, Sakura Ogami's suicide had caused doubts to bloom within the discussion.

Cruelty couldn't exist after Ogami's sacrifice could it? Asahina is too good to have gone to such lengths in killing Hagakure, isn't she?

Feelings.

Feelings are what are injected into the discussion, despite how logical they used to be.

It makes it all the more heart-wrenching when the trio of trial-leaders have to forcefully put aside those feelings once more.

Feelings were the answer to the last trial. Feelings are what motivated the entire death of Ogami.

Feelings are what hinder the trial, and eventually damn the culprit.

* * *

The facts are laid out. Hina has no fight left in her yet. She doesn't even have enough energy or tears left to cry.

Everyone has come to a verdict.

_Aoi Asahina did it._

But doubt still lives within the group. They had come this far-- so why did she do it...?

It's Makoto who's the most hesitant out of all of them.

He still has hope in her.

He has hope in the culprits; he's always had, despite the fact that he is the one that condemns them.

It breaks her heart.

* * *

She's tired. She wants it to end.

"I did it. I killed Hiro. Stop trying to put your hope in me, still," she says, voice raspy and sounding like Death itself.

"Why?" Makoto asks, anguished. What he means to ask is, ' _Why, Hina? You were a good person. You were going to move past your best friend's death, full of strength. Why?_ '

"I couldn't stop myself. It just happened," she says tonelessly, sagging more under the truth. "I took out all my frustrations about Sakura-chan being dead on the closest person. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time... He just said something at the wrong time that set it all off. That's it."

Silence. Dead silent, if one ignored Monokuma's cackling.

"Do you wish it had been **I** you had killed, Asahina?" Byakuya asks eventually, searching her with his sharp eyes. The look in those cold irises tell a story that he is absolutely sure that she will say yes.

"Honestly? Probably, yeah," she says truthfully. "Maybe it wouldn't have...The body wouldn't be..."

She chokes on her sentence. She cannot speak any longer. She's exhausted all the reasoning, humanity, energy she had left.

No one says a word. Not even Touko, to defend Byakuya.

The mangled corpse of a dead friend warranted that silence.

"Allllright! It's Voting Time!" Monokuma interjects happily, his playful voice cutting the atmosphere and eerie silence, as if he were a surgeon doing some expensive plastic surgery that would earn him his entire yearly salary.

He cackles voraciously as everyone stares blankly down at their buttons.

Hina's the first to press the button to condemn herself.

* * *

 "Coooorrect! Ding ding ding!" Monokuma booms. "The culprit-- the blackened who killed Yasuhiro Hagakure-- iiiiiis Aoi Asahina!"

Monokuma's cackling is once more the only noise in the fog of silence.

"Hina," Makoto mutters sadly, the wisp of a name traveling through the courtroom.

"I know what I did can't be forgiven, but..." Hina starts, trying to find the words. These words could be the last ones to her friends. "Do you think we would've gotten out together, as friends still?"

The others take a pained breath in-synch. This shadow of a girl is no longer the Hina they knew; she is broken beyond repair.

"Of course," Byakuya scoffs, trying to inject as much of his old bravado in his voice. He knows it sounds faked to his ears, but Hina still seems to buy it. She gives him a wobbly smile, then shakes her head in exasperation, an inkling of her old self flowing back into her like the tide near the shore.

She needed this constant. The constant of Byakuya Togami being a stuck up, royal ass.

It actually gave her comfort.

It wasn't soft and made her feel aching, like Makoto's constant of being forgiving and hopeful. Nor was it the wrenching feeling of Kyoko's logistic, analytical talk. And it sure wasn't icky like Touko's self-loathing and poison-dripping words.

It showed that not everything had changed. That some of the past still remained. That Togami sure knew how to be a douche-baggy asshat as always-- yet somehow articulate something that would snap her out of her funk, like last trial.

"We'd make it out, with our friends watching over us," Makoto adds. "And we'd finally see real sunlight and grass and trees."

Hina stares at him, stunned.

Even after all his time...He still has hope?

And in her, no less...

The quiet is broken once more, by another voice.

"There would be space stretching out in many directions," Kyoko says quietly, looking away from them, "where we could finally stretch out our legs and feel the ground beneath our feet".

Kyoko, who was bad at showing emotion, was...Trying to comfort her as well?

"T-There'd probably be a pool for y-you to jump s-straight into, without thinking, l-like usual," Touko muttered, twisting and fidgeting with her hands.

Even Touko, who usually had little good to say about anything or anyone...

It hurts.

The comforting promises hurt.

It hurts more than any blame they could dish out on her, because she realizes that she can no longer spend time with these people.

Her friends.

The moment is shattered by Monokuma's jibbing. "Wow, you're all so **sappy**! I can't believe that you think that crap could **possibly** be true! Gyahaha!"

"Buuuut, don't forget-- you've all voted for the culprit, and the culprit's been found guilty," Monokuma adds, his voice dropping lower, sounding much more dangerous. "There's no use wondering about those hopeful little scenarios now."

Hina's head drops down in dread, as she stares at the tiles of the courtroom.

"IIIIIIIIT'S PUNISHMENT TIME!" Monokuma booms, cackling hysterically, and all Hina can do is feel like she's going to be sick all over her tennis shoes.

Monokuma takes out a gavel, and bangs it upon the button by his judge's seat.

* * *

AOI ASAHINA HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY

COMMENCING PUNISHMENT

* * *

 

 

_Aoi Asahina’s Execution:  
_

_"Water Illusion Show”_

 

 

* * *

Like customary, Aoi is dragged off by Monobear into the Execution Chambers. She’s struggling intensely on the hold on her neck, kicking with her strong swimmer's legs in futility.

Everything goes by in a whirl of panic, paranoia, and adrenaline. From her position of being dragged, she notices that the lighting is dramatic, and everything is dank and moldy.

In what seemed like no time whatsoever-- but at the same time, an eternity of fear and despair-- she is dragged off at her very execution.

She ends up behind a curtain, and she knows for certain that this will shroud the machine of torture that is coming for her. For someone as disgusting as her-- a murderer.

Her eyes roam around uncertainly. She takes in the sights. Despite the large curtain dominating her vision, she notes that she's on some type of deck. Looking down, she notices a large pool full of clear water.

She feels dread well up in her stomach as she realizes that Monokuma is going to take the very thing she loves and turn it into her worst nightmare.

* * *

The curtains open with a flourish. Monokuma had done this with a pull of a lever, on the control panel by the side of the ‘stage’.

Monokuma pops up dressed up as a magician, a top hat on his head and a ‘wand’ in one of his nubby paws. “Welcome to the Water Illusion Show, everyone! I **hope** you’ll enjoy it!” he exclaims, as if opening a magic show to a group of young children.

Hina whips her head over to the crowd. There is a crowd of Monokumas cheering excitingly.

However, behind the fake crowd... There they are. In a 'top box'-- behind a panel of clear, sturdy glass. Her friends

She stares at the familiar figures, her shining blue eyes wide and fearful. They look nervous and pensive; they must also be wondering how bad this execution will turn out.

So far, from the enthusiastic tone of the bear’s voice, the group **know** that it won’t be good. ‘Vanishing’ also sounds incredibly ominous, when coming from the damned bear's mouth.

Monokuma presses a button on the control panel to spring Hina from the deck with a comical ' _boing_ ' sound effect. She shrieks in surprise, the moment looking at her friends over, as she hits the freezing water.

The water is unbearably cold. Definitely below freezing temperatures. She has her jacket, but it gives no iota of warmth to her in the chilly water.

After the moment of shock passes, her legs start kicking, so that she doesn't sink and hit the bottom. Hina wrenches her eyes open and looks around frantically, noticing that she’s in a large tank-like structure. From below the surface, she notices easily that has steel plates on the sides. But is seems that the sections that face the stage and audience are clear as crystal.

Nodding nervously to herself, she kicks her legs and freestyles her way back to the surface. As she breaks the surface of the water, and properly comes up for air, the curtains close again. Terrified of the implications of such, she whips her head around in all directions, still trying to come to grips with her current situation as she gasps to get air back into her lungs.

Monokuma, thrilled at the growing terror of the usually chipper and _hopeful_ girl, presses a large red button whilst waving his wand childishly. On the opposite side of Hina, a panel of the tank slides up with a grinding sound.

Three large, and very menacing shark, deftly swim out of the panel.

They aren't the bulky type-- no, these shark are lean, with their powerful muscles clear and defined under their rubbery hide.

* * *

The curtain rises once more, and Hina is in a complete panic.

She remembers how inhumane Leon’s execution was, when he took beating after beating from the high-powered pitching machine, and how they had to watch the **entire** thing. Watch the blood fly from the constant slamming of the projectiles.

Would her classmates **really** get to see her getting ripped apart from a shark?

Dear **God**.

She’s utterly **horrified** of the possibility. So much so that it makes her feel like puking right there and then, in the much-too-small-tank that's showing her in the same waters as three sharks.

Despite what she did…Despite what she did, they were all her friends, and she didn’t want to subject them to such mortifying images...!

A sharp, stabbing pain blooms in her heart. She could _never_ hope to out-swim vicious, Mono-cultivated sharks. It was impossible.

She spares a glance at her classmates, and they’re staring with wide eyes and gaping mouths as well. Even the usual ineffable Kyoko looks utterly mortified at the inevitable future of the tan girl.

This was a situation even more hopeless and terrifying than the time she almost drowned when she was a naïve little kid. Or the time there was a large storm that swept her off miles and miles from the coast, and she had to keep herself from drowning from the gales and pounding rain.

Monokuma would make **sure** that what she loves would be the gruesome end of her.

The curtain closes, and she sends a small prayer of thanks to Kami and Sakura-chan that at least her friends didn’t have to watch her get ripped apart limb from limb. Small mercies and silver linings were the only things left, the only things that hadn't left her.

The sharks decide to circle her menacingly, and whenever she goes one side or another to try to break out of the circle, they snap at her. If she could just swim to the side of the tank, where the diving board had been...!

Monokuma seems to think that this suspense should be part of the show, so he raises the curtain, watching with glee.

The students look close to throwing up at the show of inhumanity that was Monokuma making the sharks play with its prey. With a cackle, the bear closes the curtain once more, and exclaims a cheerful “And now watch as she disappears!” to the crowd. He waves his fake wand in circles, and cackles cruelly.

* * *

This is it.

She hears the word disappear. She knows it's going to happen now.

At least Monokuma kept the curtain down.

That's the last thought she has, before the sharks start to dive towards her. Monokuma's last line was their signal.

* * *

One of the sharks dives forwards and starts with Aoi’s left arm, ripping and gnashing it off as she wails in pain. The other two sharks wait, almost politely, as they still swim circles around her. After enough blood has left the mangled stub that was her left arm, it creates a small red haze.

After those few seconds, the other sharks start in-- taking her right hand, her left foot. It becomes a whirl of shark and blood and flesh. They simply swiftly disassembled her, Monokuma cooing all the while.

It only lasted a few seconds, but they were the most painful of moments in her life, and possibly even **prior** lives.

She blacked out from the pain just after the first two bites, so she didn’t have to see herself fully being ripped apart and die gruesomely. But what were small mercies to a dead girl?

* * *

Hearing her wavering screams, seeping from behind the crimson curtain, finally tipped the students off the edge. Touko and Makoto threw up on the spot. Kyoko and Byakuya were biting their hands so hard that blood was seeping through their fingers in rivers; Byakuya clutched so hard at his side that he started to rip his suit jacket, and fresh tear tracks were on Kyoko’s face.

Even if they didn’t see what exactly happened to her, the screams and the most gruesome scenes they could imagine were enough to cause them insufferable amounts of pain.

Imaginations and the unknown, after all, are more terrifying than what’s before someone’s eyes. Even if that something is seeing someone being ripped apart by sharks.

* * *

The sharks already finished their meal, so with that, Monobear raised the curtain with a flourish of his wand and a booming “Tadaaaa!”.

All that was left of their once hopeful friend was a few scraps of her red jacket, and her neon-pink blood-- which was slowly spreading and coiling throughout the tank, turning the entire tank of water a sickening color.

The sight left the final four teens shaking.

Touko, after looking ready to pass out from shaking so strongly, did just that. Makoto had sunk to his knees, tears and snot streaming down his face while his body quaked; his tears blurred his vision, but the sight of the empty tank was forever burned into his retinas. Spurts of intense shaking riddled Byakuya's body, and Kyoko trembled like a leaf in the wind.

They looked almost completely and utterly broken.

* * *

This despairing execution...It was extremely enjoyable for Monokuma and the Mastermind. Much more than usual, in fact!

After all, this girl was the chipper hope and sunshine of her classmates, the Pollyanna of the group of students. She always trained herself to better herself, wanting to be the most achieved swimmer, to go for the gold. She wanted peace and happiness and friendship and unity for all, especially those classmates she became good friend with at her time at Hope's Peak.

It was truly despairing for such an accomplished, sweet girl, to go the gruesome way she did. :)

 _Upupupu_... _Puhuhuhu_...

So despairing!

And a smiley emoticon simply makes things all the more cheerful. :)


End file.
